MLB: From Expansion To Contraction

state of the union

As much as sports is a business, there does remain some fundamental differences between the two. When GM or GE shuts its doors, blue and white collar employees get pummeled and the unions stand up and fight. In this case, the Players Association has been relatively quiet. At first glance, this sounds strange. Since contracting two teams entails losing two entire rosters at the MLB level as well as at numerous farm teams, this effectively cuts thousands of jobs.

Entire communities would be affected, but this is not about them. The players are quiet because they are to blame (along with the owners); if players accepted a salary cap, expenses would be controlled. However, here is an update from the "not in your wildest dreams" folder: the players will never accept a salary cap, so seeing poor teams disappear is fine with them. Poor teams would not shell out the large salaries anyway. Haven't you heard of Darwin?

dialing 911

Admittedly, the players are not alone in their greed. Owners could also play a part in helping matters. They could accept an NFL-style revenue sharing deal but this possibility also belongs in the "not in your wildest dreams" folder. Thus, we return to the original premise: the rich do not want to support the poor.

A year ago, merely suggesting that baseball would contract one team would have been scoffed. But as the events of 9/11 unfolded, everything changed, well almost everything. Cities no longer cared about having teams, they sought security; airlines thought less about getting bookings from traveling franchises, they cared about airline security. If corporations had any desire to be associated with sports teams, it was lessened as priorities changed — fast.

build it and they will come?

What is happening in MLB is no different than what has been going on around the world. A journalist mentioned to Bud Selig that if you added the revenues of all teams and divided this number by the number of teams, everyone would be in the black. What is the problem?

My reaction is that if you took the world's aggregate GDP and divided it by the number of people in this world, you would get a surplus. So why we do have world hunger and why are so many people living in poverty?

Inequity exists because the rich do not want to support the poor in business, sports or life. They did not before 9/11 and they will not now. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Build it, and they will come.

Answer: Before this year, Colangelo requested that 10 veteran players defer $20 million in salary so he could sign more players. According to USA Today , Colangelo has over $200 million in deferred payments and guaranteed contracts through 2006. Who said winning was cheap?